


the beginning is the end is the beginning

by ohyondermemphis



Series: A 90s Mixtape [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A 90s Mixtape, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Growing Up Together @ Wools, Mary Margaret Needs Another Cigarette, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tom Riddle Born In Harry’s Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26433001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohyondermemphis/pseuds/ohyondermemphis
Summary: This is how it starts.Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.And this is how it all deviates.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Series: A 90s Mixtape [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921390
Comments: 12
Kudos: 295





	the beginning is the end is the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Because. A rambling range of stories, this being the first.
> 
> _Delivered from the blast  
>  The last of a line of lasts  
> The pale princess of a palace cracked  
> And now the kingdom comes  
> Crashing down undone  
> And I am a master of a nothing place  
> Of recoil and grace_
> 
> _the beginning is the end is the beginning / the smashing pumpkins_

This is how it starts.

_Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much._

Nice and normal, and definitely not abnormal. Willfully very unfreakish, and how dare anyone suggest otherwise. Petunia wakes Vernon up, quarter to six, better than any clock. She softly pushes him to the shower and is already ready by the time he lumbers down the stairs of their modest three bedroom on Privet Lane.

She makes toast and eggs, coffee and tea and when the light finally hits outside, they hear the sound for the first time.

Petunia glances at him, toast halfway to mouth and moves to go upstairs to Dudley. Even though they both know if it was Dudley, they’d have heard it through the entire house by now. What a big boy they had, such good lungs.

But the sound is quiet, pitiful.

Nothing at all like Dudders.

He stands behind Petunia as they creep along the foyer, and he reaches inside the little crawl space under the stairs for a bat that he has to knock the cobwebs off of.

The door opens, just as the first rays of sunshine hit Petunia’s rose bushes.

There is a baby on the door step. Petunia jerks back, and Vernon stumbles, holding onto the wall to keep from toppling. She nudges the bundle into the house with her foot. Slams the door just as quickly, peeping out behind the curtains around the frame to make sure no one saw.

She kneels down, peaking inside the parcel. It’s a dreadful, dark haired _thing_. They keep it in the soft red blankets that wrap it against the chill of autumn, as red as its cheeks from all that caterwauling.

“Well.” Vernon rubs a meaty hand over the blond bush of his mustache, sweat already glistening on his forehead. “We can’t keep it.” He turns to Petunia, who rules with the iron fist of femininity.

She looks at him shocked and he has a flicker of unease, surely...

“Of course not, why would you ever think … we’d raise something of _hers_.” A quiet exhalation of air, a breath of relief, he was not going to open that can of worms. The thing hiccups on a cry, Petunia pushes it into the corner of the kitchen. Petunia has grabbed his half read newspaper, and now there it sits, right on top of the weather.

Great.

He pulls at his too tight tie, brown and plain, and squeezes past Petunia to edge closer to the door. “Well. I’ll see you, dear.” Petunia narrows eyes and crosses her arms just as he reaches for the knob to escape this bizarre circus act that has unfolded all along his kitchen and newspaper.

“Vernon. You will take that thing,” her shrillness reaches a new height and he winces, curling his own shoulders in. “To London and I will not ever have another Potter darken my doorstep.” Dudley starts his own version of screaming right after his mother finishes. Petunia rushes by him, blonde ringlets bouncing, already up the stairs and through Dudley’s door before he can utter a reply.

Right then. Best be on with it.

And this is how it all deviates.

Rebecca, who works the front desk, and Mary Margaret who minds the toddlers at Wool’s are on a smoke break when Vernon Dursley comes in on two wheels. Before she can even flick the last half of her cigarette to the ground, the walrus-like man pushes a little babe in Mary Margaret’s arms, tearful and wrapped in soaking wet red blankets.

He takes off before she can even get a look at his plate.

Piece. Of. Shit.

She glances over to Rebecca, sucking down a truly glorious lung full of nicotine and rolls her eyes. They had taken in two already this month, and funding was slim as it was. But looking down at this little red faced babe, green eyes that reminded her of the hills up north, all lovely and clear she swallows any reservations and walks inside.

She pops in to see Janice, telling her to call round for the doctor, the babe (hefty little thing, has to be past nursing) would have to be checked over.

“And Billy’s been running fever again, so he’ll have to be looked at as well.” And with that, and fourteen steps down the hall to the wee one’s room, she places the tot beside Tom Riddle, who’s fever had broken two days ago.

They look to be the same age, her just the tad bit rounder. Harry, very distraught and amazed at all these new people and another baby, keeps her big round eyes on him as Mary Margaret peels the blanket off her. She pauses, one hand holding her down, as the letter drops almost soundlessly beside her.

Mary Margaret opens it up, puts it beside the babe as she reads, her eyes round, her face twists in disbelief. She finishes, a pro at changing nappies, and picks up both letter and envelope as Harriet (oh what a sweet little name) clamors back to her bum. Mary Margaret lets out a laugh and levels a look at the tot, like she’d be in on this joke. But, still, poor thing, to be surrounded by such insanity, magic and murder and mayhem, right, best to give it to the trash incinerator and be done with it, no magic involved when a middle age man knocks up a teenager and gets rid of the evidence, Mary Margaret’s seen that with her own two eyes.

“Harriet.” She murmurs and the babe swings those big eyes back at Mary Margaret, must be right then. She can’t help but push back some of that crazy dark hair off her face, she looks at Tom smiling. “Tom, this is Harriet.”

He is not nearly as enamored. He chin waffles for a moment and he swings those darling burgundy eyes, and Mary Margaret, always fond of children, just couldn’t help herself, knew those two would grow up to be some lookers. But not now. Not when Tom screams at the top of his lungs at having to share his cot.

“Hush, now.” She pops the binky back in and with one last look at two pairs of trembling tear wet eyes but blissful quiet, goes to finish her cigarette.

They don’t get along at all, of course. And between the three of them, poor little Billy gets the worst. The two are bad enough, but they’re horrible to the runt of the pack. So, Mary Margaret keeps Billy on her hip and Tom and Harriet where she can see them.

They both are walking when Billy keeps crawling to her, and even though she can’t see them pushing, or biting, or pinching she finds the other’s marks on either of them. She lets them be, no use trying to corral them when Esther is sick and for a solid month she watches the two year olds as well.

Time passes at Wool’s both insidiously fast and slow. Mary Margaret is only surprised when they age out of her care into Esther’s because it only feels like yesterday Tom had come screaming into her world just as quickly as Harriet quietly had. Now both of them, eleven years old and full of sass and sometimes spite, have aged all the way up to Rebecca’s side of the building.

She still lets them sit with her as she takes her cigarette breaks, the fresh air does them a world of good at any rate and she likes to listen to them squabble, even as she rolls her eyes.

So, as you can imagine, they go from tike to child without much to do, except Tom settles into his superiority a little less because Harry has proven she’s just as special as she is.

They both can make things happen.

And Harry feels a little more superior, because if a toad like Tom Riddle is special, then she’s more so.

And if Mary Margeret was a betting woman she’d be sure they’d be married twice and divorced just as many times come their adulthood.

Just can’t seem to leave the other alone.

She watches them now, a suck of nicotine and, by God she’d have to quit before too long, her cough was getting worse. Harry, in third generation Mary Janes and bandaids on her knees walks the tight line of the sidewalk, Tom right behind her, toes pointed exactly the same. A push here, a shove there until they match up, toe to toe like little soldiers in a line.

“Come on, kiddos.” She grinds the rest of her cigarette under her white turned gray keds. She eases from the brick wall that surrounds Wool’s to look at her two wayward charges. Harry had stopped moving and was turned fully towards Tom, he had slipped in between one inhale and the next and Harry had reached out a hand to help him up.

Mary Margaret didn’t even hear him fall. Her brow draws in concern, it’s like the two of them are playing some bizarre game of freeze, trapped hand on arm on arm on hand, clasped together. Their mouths are open and Harry is the first one to jerk back, tears in her eyes, a plain look of fright on her face. Tom isn’t faring much better, his lip quivers and as Mary Margaret rushes over (goodness anything could be on that ground, what if, what if) its almost as if it’s ten years ago with them both in the crib.

They shake off her concerns, abruptly silent, side eying the other. She would think that Tom might have said, done something but as much as he acted, he’d never caused her worry that he’d be one of those she’d have to worry about.

It was strange, and Mary Margeret kept looking back at them as they walked in, catching snatches of a whispered conversation.

“I don’t -“

“Stop it, you-“

“I didn’t!” She holds open the door to the dining room for them, curious but with little time to do anything about it. Surely it would be resolved by morning.

But morning brought an altogether new problem. A man walks in, early fifties, aurburn hair just beginning to thin, poshly dressed (in this side of town) in a very particularly bright plum suit, holding a briefcase and asking about Tom and Harry. He tells Janice that he’s from a school, north of here, and he’s come to see them. He shows Janice a letter, and Mary Margaret lingers at the coffee machine in the little dinette off the main hall, listening to his credentials. Janice tells him there is a small table in the garden out back he can speak with them in, goes over the loudspeaker for them. The little ones were playing on half broken jungle gyms and rotting see saws, but Esther would be out there to supervise.

Harry and Tom would just be getting back from the upper school down the road.

The man nods as he passes by Mary Margeret, and as much as she’d like to oversee the three of them, she’ll just have to wait to hear about it on her cigarette break.

The two are oddly quiet that afternoon and Mary Margeret feels like it’s pulling teeth to get them to talk to her, especially Tom who sometimes never misses the opportunity to brag. They sit on the sidewalk, long skinny legs stretched out, passing a bright yellow taffy between them.

“A new school? Sounds pretty exciting.” One of them grunts and hands the taffy to the other. A bite. “Beautiful country, north of here.” Another grunt, a swap, a bite. Mart Margeret narrows her eyes and flicks her cigarette.

Tough crowd.

She sighs, eleven going on sixteen, she thought she’d have a few more years of them at least. She sucks another lungful in and lets out with the smoke a nervous ramble of her memories of Scotland, how cold it was, how gorgeous too.

Harry loses some tenseness around her eyes while she listens and leans forward, her hands gripping the cement on either side of her. Tom leans back, dead stare like he usually has when he thinks Mary Margeret is talking too much. She fumbles from one word to the other when she sees a flash of two pinkies twined together between them.

They don’t notice it.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr ohyondermemphis, would love to hear your thoughts on this!


End file.
